Flores Julie Lindsay

Seven years of marriage, and I had never once sat at a Marchetti family table. Not on Christmas Eve. Not on Thanksgiving. Not on New Year's. Every holiday, Luca left before sundown and came home the next morning with cigar smoke in his collar and wine on his breath — traces of a world I was never allowed to enter. He always said it was tradition. Old blood. Sicilian rules passed down through generations: no outsiders at the family table. No exceptions. Not even for a wife who took the Marchetti name. I believed him. Every single time. Until the night before New Year's Eve, when he asked me to check the tire pressure on his Maserati, and I found three photographs wedged behind the owner's manual in the glovebox. All three were taken in the Marchetti private dining hall — I recognized it from a picture his mother had shown me once. Vaulted stone ceilings, a mahogany table long enough to seat forty, and the family crest carved into the mantle above the fireplace. In every photo, the same woman stood beside my husband. Her arm through his. Her hip pressed to his side. His hand on the small of her back with the kind of ease that doesn't come from politeness. It comes from habit. I sat in the driver's seat until the steering wheel turned cold beneath my fingers. There was no tradition. There was no rule. The place beside Luca had simply been taken — by someone who wasn't me. And he'd lied about it for seven years. …… My phone lit up on the dashboard. His name. How's the car? Come home — dinner's getting cold. I typed On my way, slipped the photos into my coat, and started the engine. The apartment smelled like rosemary and slow-braised lamb when I walked in. Luca leaned against the counter in a black henley, sleeves shoved to his elbows, scrolling his phone. He looked up and gave me that half-smile — the one I used to believe was mine alone. "Nothing serious?" "Nail in the rear tire. Already patched." My voice came out even. Flat. I surprised myself. I set the table the way I always did — his plate left, glass right, napkin folded once — and we sat down. I cut into the lamb I'd spent all afternoon making, chewed, swallowed. Then I put my fork down. "Tomorrow's New Year's Eve." I stared at my plate. "The dinner at your father's estate. Still no room for me?" His jaw shifted — barely, the kind of thing you only catch after seven years of reading someone's face like scripture. "Clara." Patient. Practiced. "We've been through this. My father's table, my father's rules. Blood only. You know how the old man is." He reached across and laid his hand over mine. Warm. Heavy. The same hand I'd seen resting on another woman's waist in a photo taken three months ago. "I wish I could bring you. You know that." A gentle squeeze. His thumb traced a slow circle on the inside of my wrist — that thing he always did when he wanted me to stop asking. It used to make my pulse jump. Tonight it made my stomach turn. "It's just one night. I'll be home before noon. We'll have the whole day." Seven years of the same words. The same careful tone. The same squeeze to pin the lie in place. I used to feel guilty sitting here — guilty for wanting more, for not being Sicilian enough, for pushing against something I thought was sacred. Now I knew there was nothing sacred about it. Just a door he never meant to open for me. "Fine." I slid my hand away. "Let's eat." He studied me a moment too long. Something flickered behind his eyes — not guilt, exactly. More like a man checking whether a lock still held. Then his phone buzzed, and the moment was gone. After dinner he stood and reached for the plates — unusual. "Leave it. I got it tonight." "Since when do you do dishes?" He kissed the top of my head on his way past. "Since my wife made me the best lamb in Manhattan." The kiss landed on my hair like a coin tossed at a stranger. I nodded. Didn't move. I sat and listened to the water run, then got up and walked to his jacket on the back of the couch. Seven years, and I had never once touched his phone. Never opened his wallet. Never tried the combination on the safe in his study. I gave him every ounce of trust a wife could give — the kind that now sat behind my ribs like something swallowed wrong. His screen lit up when I touched it. Locked. I carried it to the kitchen doorway. He had his back to me, scrubbing a pan, water loud against steel. I pressed the edge of the phone to the hand hanging at his side. Unlocked. In the living room I scrolled fast. Texts, calls, apps — most of it clean. Business. The digital surface of a man who kept his secrets behind one well-hidden door. I found it under a contact labeled Firm — S. Valenti. The messages were sparse. Weeks between each one. No love letters. No desperation. Just the shorthand of two people who'd stopped needing to explain themselves to each other a long time ago. Tomorrow? Same as always? Yeah. Missed you. Photo this year? Like we always do. Of course. The last message was from that afternoon. A photo attached. I tapped it open. The Marchetti dining hall. Luca and Sienna, shoulder to shoulder. His arm circling her waist. Her head tipped toward him, dark hair spilling across his jacket, lips curved in the kind of smile that only lives between people who've touched each other a thousand times. Timestamp: October. Columbus Day weekend — the one I spent alone in this apartment eating reheated soup, half-watching a movie, waiting for him to call from a gathering I believed I wasn't permitted to attend. I kept scrolling. Christmas. Thanksgiving. Fourth of July. Every year, the same quiet exchange. A few words. A photo. Then nothing. No explicit language. Nothing crude. Just the effortless intimacy of two people who never had to try. Seven years of holidays spent alone in this apartment. Seven years of it's tradition and just one night and I'll make it up to you. And the whole time, she was standing exactly where I should have been. Not as a guest. Not as an outsider let in from the cold. As his. "What are you looking at?" Luca's voice, right behind me.

The day the doctor confirmed I was carrying twins, I drove to Marcus's office to surprise him. Through the glass wall of the conference room, I saw my husband of three years feeding a strawberry to a woman sitting on his lap. She was pregnant. Much further along than me. His mother, Helen, sat across from them, smiling warmly—the same woman who'd told me for three years that I was "the only daughter-in-law she'd ever want." Helen raised her champagne glass. "Once Rosalie's twins are born and the DNA matches, we'll take the babies. The surrogacy contract is airtight. She signed the prenup. She gets nothing." My blood turned to ice. Surrogacy contract? Marcus kissed the woman's forehead—tender, adoring, everything he'd been with me. "Lena, I'm sorry you had to wait. Mother needed Rosalie's eggs because your bloodline wasn't 'pure' enough for the family trust. But our baby will inherit too. I'll make sure of it." Lena pouted. "Three years, Marcus. Three years I've shared you with that clueless little orphan." "It's almost over, love." Helen pulled out a document. "After delivery, we'll declare her mentally unfit. Emergency custody. She won't even get a hearing." My hands went to my stomach, shaking so hard I could barely stand. Three years. Three years of love, of him cradling me at night, whispering that I was his world. Three years of his mother teaching me family recipes and calling me "dear." They were farming me. Like livestock. I stumbled back from the glass. My heel caught the carpet and I grabbed the wall, biting through my lip to keep from screaming. Marcus's voice carried through the crack in the door. "Has Dr. Voss adjusted her prenatal vitamins? I need these twins born healthy. The trust requires genetic verification within 48 hours of birth." "All handled," Helen said. "She takes whatever we give her. She trusts us completely." She trusts us completely. The words hit like a blade to the chest. Because I did. God help me, I did. When I was nineteen, alone, grieving my grandmother, working double shifts at the hospital—Marcus Aldric showed up like sunlight. He didn't throw money at me like the others. He sat with me in the hospital cafeteria at 2 AM, eating cold pasta, listening to me talk about my grandmother's Parkinson's. He drove four hours to find a specialist for her. When she died in my arms, he held me for six hours straight without speaking. And I married him believing I was the luckiest woman alive. Now I understood. Every kindness had been calculated. Every touch had been a transaction. I was never his wife. I was an incubator with a heartbeat. My phone buzzed. A text from Marcus: "Working late tonight, baby. Don't wait up. Love you. ❤️" I stared at the red heart emoji until my vision blurred. Then I did something I'd never done before. I didn't cry. I screenshot the prenup on my phone and sent it to the only lawyer I knew—my grandmother's old neighbor, now a senior partner at a top firm. Then I walked to my car, sat down, and placed both hands on my stomach. "I will get us out of this," I whispered. "Whatever it takes." I started the engine. In the rearview mirror, the Aldric Corp building glittered like a glass cathedral. I was going to burn it to the ground. But first, I needed to find out exactly what they'd put in my vitamins.

The flatline sound was the last thing I heard before the darkness took me. Not "I love you." Not "Stay with me." Not even my name. Just the long, mechanical scream of a heart monitor giving up on me the same way my husbands already had. But I didn't die. The universe, cruel and poetic, decided I hadn't suffered enough yet. I woke up in a hospital basement. Not the VIP suite where the wife of Dominic and Rafael Cavarro should have been recovering. The basement. Where they sent the patients no one was coming back for. A nurse with tired eyes noticed me blinking awake and nearly dropped her clipboard. "Oh my God. You're—how are you alive?" Good question. "How long?" My voice came out like sandpaper dragging across concrete. "Three days." She checked my IV with shaking hands. "You were pronounced dead for four minutes. Your husbands signed the paperwork to—" She stopped herself. "To what?" She wouldn't look at me. "To donate your organs." I let that sink in. Four minutes dead, and Dominic and Rafael Cavarro—co-CEOs of the Cavarro empire, the two men who had once fought over who got to carry me across the threshold of our Manhattan penthouse—had already signed me away for parts. "Where are they now?" I asked, though I already knew the answer would destroy me. The nurse hesitated. Then she pulled out her phone and turned it toward me. A tabloid headline. Posted six hours ago. CAVARRO TWINS SEEN WITH MYSTERY WOMAN AT LATE WIFE'S FAVORITE RESTAURANT — "We're Healing," Says Source Close to the Family. The photo showed Dominic's hand on a woman's lower back. Rafael was laughing—that real laugh, the one with his head thrown back, the one I thought was only mine. The woman was Isabelle Moreau. My stepsister. My heart monitor spiked so hard the nurse grabbed my arm. "Ma'am, you need to calm—" "Get me a phone." My voice didn't sound like mine anymore. It sounded like something being born in fire. "And get me a mirror." She brought both. The mirror showed me a ghost. Hollowed cheeks, bruised veins from bad IVs, a hospital gown hanging off my frame like a burial shroud. Six months of being slowly poisoned will do that to a woman. Because that's what Isabelle had been doing. I knew it now with the clarity that only death can bring. The tea she brought me every morning. The supplements she insisted I take. The way my husbands started looking at me like I was broken—because I was. She was breaking me, one drop at a time, and they never once questioned why their wife was wasting away. They just got tired of watching. "Your emergency contact," the nurse said carefully, "is listed as Dominic Cavarro. Should I—" "No." I pushed myself upright. Every muscle screamed. I didn't care. "My emergency contact is dead. I'm dead. Keep it that way." I pulled the IV from my arm, swung my legs over the side of the bed, and stood for the first time in three days on legs that barely remembered how. The nurse stared at me. "Where are you going?" I looked at the tabloid photo one more time. Dominic's hand on Isabelle's back. Rafael's laugh. My favorite restaurant. "To collect what I'm owed." Because here's what Dominic and Rafael didn't know—what no one knew, not even Isabelle with all her scheming: I wasn't just their wife. I was the anonymous designer behind Maison Étoile, the fashion label that had generated forty percent of the Cavarro empire's luxury division revenue last year. Every sketch, every collection, every piece that had the fashion world falling over itself—mine. And I had the contracts to prove it. They didn't just lose a wife. They lost their empire's golden goose. They just didn't know it yet.

My husband's assistant has "accidentally" deleted my name from the company's annual gala guest list for the 23rd time. I finally lose all patience and walk into Ethan Blackwell's office, holding up my phone screen. My voice is shaking, but I refuse to let it break. "Your assistant has removed me from the gala list again. Twenty-three times, Ethan. Is she illiterate, or does she just enjoy humiliating your wife?" Ethan doesn't even look up from his laptop. "Sienna is a Harvard MBA graduate, Aria. She doesn't make mistakes. You probably registered with the wrong email again." "I used the same email I've had for six years. The one you proposed to me with—'forever yours at this address.' Remember that?" He sighs like I'm a child throwing a tantrum. "I don't have time for this. The gala is tomorrow. Just ask Sienna to fix it." Ask Sienna. The woman who has been erasing me from my husband's life, one deletion at a time, for eight months straight. But he doesn't know that this morning, I sat in a doctor's office and heard a heartbeat that wasn't mine. Six weeks pregnant. High-risk. The doctor told me to avoid stress. I look at the man I gave up everything for—my family's billion-dollar empire, my inheritance, my name—and I feel the last thread holding me to him snap. I don't slam the door on my way out. I close it softly. That's how he should know it's over. Slamming means I still care. Silence means I'm already gone. ... I still remember the first time Sienna Cole "made a mistake." She had forwarded Ethan's personal schedule to the entire executive team—except me. When I brought it up, she pressed her hand to her chest, eyes glistening with tears. "Oh my God, Mrs. Blackwell, I'm SO sorry. I just—I get so nervous around you. You're so accomplished and intimidating, and I panicked and skipped your name. Please don't tell Ethan. He'll fire me, and I just—I really need this job." I watched a single tear roll down her perfect cheekbone and land precisely on the silk collar of her blouse. Ethan appeared behind me, took one look at Sienna's tearful face, and his jaw tightened—at me. "Aria. She's new. She made one mistake. You don't need to make her cry over a calendar invite." "I didn't—" "Just let it go. You're my wife. Act like it. Be gracious." Be gracious. That became his favorite phrase. His weapon. His leash around my neck. The second time, Sienna booked a couples' dinner reservation under Ethan's name—with herself listed as his plus-one instead of me. She called it "an autofill error." The fifth time, she rearranged his office and "accidentally" put our wedding photo in a drawer, replacing it with a framed company award. The tenth time, she scheduled a "crucial meeting" at the exact time of our wedding anniversary dinner, and Ethan chose the meeting. By the fifteenth time, I stopped counting the incidents and started counting the excuses. By the twentieth, I stopped hearing his words entirely. They were all the same. "She didn't mean it." "You're overreacting." "Be gracious, Aria." Now it was the twenty-third deletion. I stood in the bathroom of our penthouse, staring at the pregnancy test I'd hidden in my makeup bag. Two pink lines. A baby. Our baby. And a husband who didn't notice I'd been throwing up every morning for two weeks, because he left for the office at 5 AM—ever since Sienna started scheduling "early strategy sessions." I pressed my palm flat against my stomach, and something shifted inside me. Not the baby. Something deeper. A decision. I pulled out my phone and dialed a number I hadn't used in three years. It rang once. "Aria." My mother's voice was sharp, controlled, and unmistakably powerful. The voice of the CEO of the largest media conglomerate in North America. "I was wondering when you'd call." I leaned against the cold tile wall and closed my eyes. "Mom. I'm coming home." The silence on the other end lasted exactly two seconds. "I'll send the jet."

My wedding ring on my finger. His baby on the ultrasound in my purse. And my mafia husband's voice through the office door: "The moment the Solovyov deal closes, put her in the ground. Make it look like the cartel did it." I stopped breathing in the middle of our penthouse hallway, the warmth of his goodnight kiss still on my mouth. Twenty minutes ago, Matteo had pressed me against this exact wall, buried his face in my hair, and whispered, "You're the only clean thing I've ever held, Sienna." Now I was hearing what he held me for. "She's done her part, Camila." Matteo's voice was bored. The voice he used to choose ties. "Her uncle's docks are signed over. The marriage was a leash. Time to slip it." A woman's laugh poured through the door. Low. Smug. A laugh I knew. Camila. His enforcer. The woman who'd zipped me into my wedding dress and called me sister. "She still thinks you married her for love," Camila purred. "It's almost sweet." "She made dinner tonight." Amusement curled through every word. "Candles. Said she had news. I'll let her have her last good evening. I'm not a monster." I looked down at my clutch, where the printout was folded against the gloss. A heartbeat. Nine weeks. I'd cried in the clinic bathroom that morning, happy-cried, planning how to tell him — his favorite wine, the little box, the words on my lips. Now that little heartbeat felt like a countdown on my own grave. "When?" Camila pressed. "After the closing. Two days. A faked cartel hit on the highway. Grieving husband. The city throws me sympathy and territory both." "And me?" "Then you wear the ring. The way it should've gone from the start." My lungs filled with broken glass. Three years of his bed. His name. His lies poured into my ear like honey. The old Sienna would have shoved that door open. Screamed. Begged him to say it wasn't real. But something in me went quiet. Cold. Sharpened to a point. I walked back to the dining room. Sat at the table I'd set with my own two hands. And opened a contact I hadn't touched in three years, saved under one word. "Padrino." It rang once. "Sienna? Is this — is this really you, figlia?" "Hello, Godfather." My voice did not shake. "Tell the family. I'm coming home." A long breath, heavy with old grief and older hope. "Three years we waited for you to say those words. The seat is yours, Sienna. It was always yours." I hung up and looked at our anniversary dinner. Candles still burning. His chair empty. He was in that office, scheduling my murder with the woman I'd loved like blood. I pressed a hand to my stomach. Don't be scared, little one. Mommy isn't the lamb they think she is. I lifted my glass of sparkling water toward his empty chair and smiled. He wanted me dead? He had no idea who he'd married. My godfather doesn't run a business. He runs the oldest blood empire on the East Coast. And I'm the last heir breathing.

I went into labor on the marble floor of the Moretti mansion while my husband toasted his mistress three rooms away. I called him eleven times. He silenced every single one. On the twelfth, his first love—Sofia—answered. "Elena, stop. Dante's busy. Sofia just collapsed in his arms. Have some decency." She hung up before I could scream that my water had broken, that his son was coming two months early, that I was bleeding on the imported stone he loved more than me. I dragged myself toward the grand staircase. Down below, the gala roared—two hundred guests in black tie, champagne towers, violins. All to honor Dante Moretti, the youngest don to ever rule the Eastern Syndicate, a man feared from the docks of New York to the vaults of Sicily. My husband. The man who hadn't touched me in five months because Sofia Russo had "come home broken" and needed him to put her back together. I clawed my way to the top of the staircase and looked down. There he was. His hand cradling Sofia's cheek as she swayed against his chest in a blood-red gown, eyes closed, lips parted like a woman in a dream. She looked like a queen. She looked like his wife. I was his wife. A contraction tore through me so hard I crumpled against the banister. "Dante!" I screamed. The orchestra swallowed it whole. It was his mother, Isabella, who finally saw me. But she didn't run. She climbed the stairs and seized my wrist, nails like talons. "What are you doing? Crawling around like an animal at my son's celebration?" "The baby," I gasped. "He's coming—" "You trapped my son with that belly. Don't think I'm blind." Her grip twisted. "Sofia nearly died tonight. Crawl back to your room before you shame this family further." She let go. She walked away. Forty minutes later, a kitchen maid found me unconscious in a spreading pool of red and called for the family doctor. I delivered my son by emergency cesarean—alone. A boy. Premature. Fragile. Alive. When I opened my eyes, the room was empty except for the soft beep of a monitor and the smallest cry I'd ever heard. I checked my phone. One message from Dante, sent four hours after the maid had told him. [Heard you made a scene. Theatrical, even for you. Sofia relapsed after your stunt. I'm staying with her. We'll speak when you've calmed down.] I read it until the words dissolved. Then I typed three words. [I want out.] He read it instantly. His reply came in three seconds. [Good. I was waiting for you to say it.]

My husband, the most feared Don in the city, told me he loved another woman. On the night of our anniversary. Over the wine I'd poured for him with my own hands. He didn't want me dead. He wanted something colder. "Elena, I'm not asking you to leave. I'm asking you to share. To let her have a place beside me. At the table. In the family." I didn't scream. I didn't reach for the blade strapped to my thigh, the one he'd taught me to use. I gave him a choice: "If she stays, I go. If I stay, she goes." He drank until the bottle was dry that night. By morning, he gave in. "Book the flight," he rasped. "I'll drive her to the airport myself." He never asked whose name was on the ticket. Rain lashed the windows of our compound, the fortress on the hill we'd bled to build, and Dante Marchetti stood by the glass and delivered his verdict in the same flat voice he used to order a man's execution. "Her name is Sofia. She handles the books now. It isn't physical, Elena. I haven't touched her. I won't. That would be an insult to you." He paused, weighing each word like he'd rehearsed them somewhere that smelled of her perfume. "I only need you to allow her a place. That's all I'm asking." That's all. I looked at this man—the boy I'd found bleeding in an alley fourteen years ago, with two enemies dead at his feet and nothing in his pockets but ambition. The boy my father, the old Don, said would either rule the city or get me buried in it. I gave him my father's army. The Vasquez name, the only name in this city that could open the doors his fists couldn't. My loyalty. My silence. My twenties. Everything. And now the Marchetti empire controlled three ports, half the docks, and every man who mattered for two hundred miles. And his heart had room for a twenty-three-year-old who called him "Don Marchetti" in front of the men and texted him at 2 a.m. "You'll always be my wife," he said, taking my hand. His palm was warm. It made my skin crawl. "My partner. She's just... softer." Partner. Fourteen years, and I'd been demoted to a business arrangement, while Sofia Russo got to be his heart. "If she stays, I go," I said. "If I stay, she goes. Choose." He chose. It took him a bottle of the Sicilian wine my father gave us at the wedding, and one long night of shattering glass in his study. But he chose. "Fine," he said at dawn, reeking of grief that wasn't for me. "She goes to Italy. But Elena—give me this month. Let me say goodbye properly. Nothing will happen. I just want to look at her a little longer." A month. That month held my birthday. Our anniversary. The day my mother was buried. He missed all three. So I went to the safe behind my closet—the one Dante didn't know existed—and I took out two things. A folder of papers he'd signed fourteen years ago without reading. Back when my father's lawyers were the only lawyers we could trust. And a phone I hadn't used in a decade. My father answered on the fifth ring. He didn't say hello. He just breathed, the way old Dons do. "Papa," I said. "I need a way out. A real one." A long pause. "Finally." "As Elena Vasquez," I said, watching the rain swallow the city my blood built. "Not Mrs. Marchetti." "Done," he said. "One week." Downstairs, Dante was telling his men to clear his schedule. He was taking Sofia to the coast. A proper goodbye. Go ahead, Dante. Say your goodbyes. Because the ticket I booked this morning—the one you think carries her away and saves our marriage— it was never for her. It was for me.

My sister handed me a serving tray at her wedding rehearsal and smiled. "Be a doll and pour the champagne, Ivy. The catering girl called in sick, and honestly—you blend in better with the staff anyway." Two hundred guests laughed. The man standing beside her in the tuxedo was Daniel. My ex-fiancé. The man who'd proposed to me eight months ago, then dumped me by text three days later to be with my younger sister, Brooke. And now I was holding a tray of his wedding champagne. "Ivy, don't just stand there," Brooke said sweetly, adjusting her diamond engagement ring—my old engagement ring, resized to fit her finger. "The glasses won't fill themselves." I gripped the tray so hard my knuckles went white. I should have walked out. Every cell in my body screamed at me to drop the tray and leave. But our mother was watching me from the front row with that cold, warning stare. The one that said: Don't you dare embarrass this family. So I poured. I moved through the rows of gold chairs, filling crystal flutes, keeping my chin level while strangers whispered behind manicured hands. "Isn't that the older sister? The one he left?" "God, how humiliating. She actually showed up to serve them." "She must be desperate. Or pathetic." When I reached Daniel's table, he didn't even look at me. He just held up his empty glass, two fingers, like I was furniture. "Top me off," he said. My hand trembled as I tilted the bottle. And that's when Brooke stood up, clinked her spoon against her glass, and the entire ballroom went silent. "Before the rehearsal dinner," she announced, beaming, "I have a tiny little announcement." She pressed a hand to her flat stomach. "Daniel and I are pregnant." The room exploded with applause. I felt the champagne bottle slip in my fingers. Brooke turned to me, her eyes glittering with something far sharper than joy. "Isn't it wonderful, big sister? You always said you wanted to be an aunt." She tilted her head. "Oh, but wait—weren't you supposed to marry him first? And you couldn't even keep him for three months." The laughter started again. Louder this time. Cruel. A guest pulled out her phone and started filming. Then another. And another. "Pour the bride a glass too, Ivy," Daniel said, finally meeting my eyes with a smug little smirk. "Sparkling cider for the mother of my child." I stared at the man I'd once loved. The man who had told me, on bended knee, that I was the only woman he'd ever wanted. And in that exact second, something inside my chest—the last fragile thread still holding me to these people—snapped clean in half. I set the bottle down on the table with a soft, deliberate click. I reached into the pocket of my borrowed black serving apron and pulled out a slim, matte-black phone. Not the cheap one everyone knew I had. A different one. A private one. I pressed a single contact and lifted it to my ear. Brooke laughed. "Who are you calling, the catering company? Tell them they sent us a terrible waitress." I didn't answer her. I just looked her dead in the eyes and spoke into the phone, my voice steady for the first time all night. "It's me," I said. "Bring the car. And bring the lawyers." The smile finally cracked on my sister's face. Because she had no idea who was about to answer that call.